Say Something
by Alethnya
Summary: She always saves him. Every time. Always. The tragedy is that it took him too long to realize it. Unrepentant Sherlolly angst. One Shot. Set during HLV, just before Christmas.


**Say Something**

**A/N**: Taking a quick break from my ongoing Star Trek Khan/OFC fic to test the Sherlolly waters a bit. This one shot is the direct result of an errant plot bunny that struck me during a conversation with my sister/beta reader Xaraphis. Never written these characters before, so I hope I've done them justice!

* * *

He stood outside the door to the lab, eyes fixed on the lone figure within and an entirely foreign trepidation sitting heavy in his gut. This was not him, this nervous hesitance. Sherlock Holmes did not linger in doorways, casting nervous glances through windows. Sherlock Holmes owned every room he entered and dismissed the feelings-the _sentiment_-of others as the maudlin drivel of lesser minds.

Sherlock Holmes, he had been reliably informed, was a complete and utter prick.

So why then this reluctance?

He knew the answer. Didn't much like it, but knew it all the same.

It was all down to her, in the end. Because she _counted. _Because she _mattered_. In ways and measures that he had only just begun to fully understand. He'd thought he knew before-had thought he had grasped the full measure of his regard for her when he'd kissed her cheek and wished her well and meant it. The ache in his chest as he'd walked away had been easily dismissed as nothing more than a symptom of his massively bruised ego. That she, of all people, had moved on...

He had been somewhat absurdly surprised, in those early days, to discover just how entirely life had gotten on with itself in his absence.

Those small discrepancies explained away, he felt quite content with how things between them had worked out. They had become friends, of a sort-far moreso than they ever had been before. He had found himself seeking her out with greater regularity even when there were no cases to be solved. She became an oasis of familiarity in the suddenly tip-tilted landscape of his life.

She with her quiet lab and her gentle smiles and soft laughter. She who always _saw_, always _understood. _She who never asked him to be anything but what he was; who knew him and liked him _because_ of his eccentricities rather than _despite_ them and one of the very few he could honestly say that about.

But then had come the storm; a deluge of his own making that he had come so very close to drowning in. The loneliness. The drugs. Three stinging slaps. So much disappointment in her eyes that it _choked _him. Then it had been the case, the case, the case and then betrayal and pain and panic and then...

Her. Again. In his head. Calming him. Centering him. Focusing him. _Saving him._

And suddenly he had known. _Known_. How could he not have _known_?

She always saved him. Every time. _Always_.

Then he'd nearly died and everything had gone to utter shit and he'd done the only thing he knew how to do which was to ignore it entirely. Because there were things that needed doing first. He needed to help John and Mary. He needed to heal. He needed to do a hundred other things before he could possibly turn his mind to the shattering realization that she...

That he...

Terrified, he had retreated. Sealing himself away from her as best he could because he couldn't...he didn't...he _wouldn't. _

He had clung to those words the few times she attempted to visit him in hospital and she, with her usual acuteness, had seemed to grasp the situation rather quickly and had stopped coming round. Exactly as he he'd intended that she should.

Over the ensuing months between then and now, he had barely seen her, barely spoken to her, save for short, stilted conversations over corpses and only, ever regarding cases. On those rare occasions, she had been the very picture of professional courtesy, answering his questions with a detached civility that felt so _wrong _coming from her that it left him feeling wrong-footed and quietly, miserably certain that he had finally, finally pushed her too far.

And now, it was coming on Christmas and he had plans in place and the easiest thing to do-the _kindest _thing to do-would be nothing at all. He had failed her magnificently. He would always fail her magnificently. Best just to leave well enough alone, let her finally move on and relegate him to the dustbin of her life. Yes, that would be the only worthy course; the obvious path for a better man.

But he was not a better man. He was a selfish, arrogant, spoilt man and he wanted her forgiveness. Needed it. Especially now, in the face of...what was coming. Because somewhere, somehow, Molly Hooper had become his strength. And he was going to need every ounce of it he could manage over the coming days.

Decided as he would ever be, he allowed himself one last deep, centering breath, and then pushed through the doors into the lab beyond.

It was nearing three in the morning-he had sought her out in the smallest hours of the morning, partly for the privacy but mostly because that was simply how long it had taken him to work up the nerve. He moved quietly, loath to break the silence that permeated the room around them, and stuck to the shadows beyond the halo of light cast by the single lamp burning at her workstation.

She knew he was there though; she always did. She lifted her head from the bit of paperwork she had been filling out, the pen stilling in her hand, her eyes unerringly finding his. Her expression, so unguarded only moments before, tightened and tensed, her shoulders going rigid beneath the stark white of her lab coat.

"Sherlock." There was no greeting in her tone, only acknowledgment and it cut him anew. That she should be the cold one while he longed for the days when her lips and tongue had caressed his name like the sweetest of treats...things had, indeed, changed.

He mastered himself, straightened and stepped closer, nearer to the light-to _her _light. "While it may appear otherwise, I have long been aware that I owe you an explanation."

Her expression didn't change. Not even by the tiniest margin. "Is that so?"

"Yes, indeed," he affirmed. "A rather large one, at that."

Her eyes, once so expressive and now as shuttered as the rest of her, flicked between his, reading him in that wholly disconcerting way she had, leaving him with the gut-churning certainty that she could see everything he didn't want her to know. The irony would have been delicious had the situation been different. It was a point of personal pride to him that he did not look away, did not shrink from her appraisal-that he stood tall and just let her look. Decide.

He was already rather intimately acquainted with the knowledge that _pride goeth before a fall, _but apparently, fate had decided that he could do with a reminding.

"I thank you for the gesture," she said blandly, eyes dropping away from him and back to her work, "but allow me to save you the effort-I'm not interested in an explanation, Sherlock. I've had my belly-full of them and I'll have no more."

He took another step forward, the front of his coat brushing the stainless steel of the table between them. "Please, Molly," he stopped, swallowed hard against the lump swiftly forming in his throat. "This is...this is a different sort of explanation..."

"And what sort is that, then? A real one? An honest one?" Her eyes were back on his now, and for the first time in months he could see something besides distance in them. Now, there was fire there. Fire and anger and pain and he knew-_knew_-that it was there, all of it, because of him. "Are you going to explain yourself and actually _mean it _for once?"

"Molly..."

"No. I'm...I'm finished with this. With _you. _Go home, Sherlock."

"No!" The word forced its way through his suddenly tight throat, torn from him on a trembling exhale. He leaned forward, hands now pressed to the table atop her papers. _You left it too long, let it go too long, and now you've lost her before you ever properly had her. _"No..._please, Molly_...please listen..."

Somewhere, some distant part of him-the part that took his brother's face in his mind-was sneering at him. _The great Sherlock Holmes, reduced to begging by a whey-faced mouse of a woman. How utterly pathetic._

But for once, he didn't listen. Couldn't listen. _Wouldn't _listen.

"_Please_..."

"No," she cut in, emphatic and without even the slightest hesitation, as coldly furious as she had been the morning he had sat before her, high as a kite and stupidly defiant about it. "There's no point in discussing it. Not any more."

Panic began to worm its way past his self-control and he leaned further forward, grasping fingers desperately seeking the warmth of her hand where it rested just at the edge of the table. "Don't say that. You don't mean that. You _can't _mean that, Molly."

She yanked her hand away and stood, lurching off the stool and away from him, her back hitting the cabinet behind her. "I've never meant anything more," she said, and her voice shook. There were tears in her eyes now, but not the right kind of tears. These tears, like everything else about her now, were angry.

He curled his hand into a fist, trying hard to pretend his hand wasn't shaking. "But...the work..." he floundered, sounding entirely unlike himself but unable, for once, to give a single damn about it. "This lab..."

If possible, her expression turned even colder. "Of course," she said, voice tight and clipped. "Of course, _the work_. How silly of me to think you meant anything else. Well, you needn't worry. I will still help you with _the work_. You'll still have the lab. You'll still have your _pathologist, _Mr. Holmes. That is, after all, my _job_."

"And my Molly?" The words were out before he could stop them, raw and ragged and broken. "Will I still have her?"

Silence.

He waited, breath coming hard and fast and stomach clenching itself into ever more intricate knots. He couldn't look at her, eyes focused on the microscope she had so recently abandoned though he could barely see it. His vision had gone oddly blurry, though he hadn't the faintest idea why.

She was quiet so long that he began to wonder if she had left entirely. But then...

"No," she said, and her voice sounded as broken as he felt, "you won't. You never did. Not really."

And there it was. Everything he had feared, but nothing more than he had expected. This...feeling like this..._wanting_ like this...he wasn't made for it. Wasn't good enough to deserve it. But it still hurt; still felt like his chest was on fire, burning him from within.

"_Molly_..."

"Goodbye, Sherlock." He couldn't watch her leave. Couldn't watch her walking away from him, though he knew that it was all he'd ever be able to see of her ever again. She would always be walking away from him...only ever away from him. He heard the door creak open, heard her pause in the doorway, hovering there for a long moment, just as he had earlier.

_Please_, he didn't say, couldn't find the words to say, wouldn't know _how _to say, _please don't go. I need you. You save me. Every time. Always. You save me._

After a long moment, he heard her give a small, hiccuping sigh. She was crying now. He had made her cry.

"Merry Christmas, Mr. Holmes."

And then she was gone, the lab door clicking shut behind her with a finality that turned his heart cold in his chest. She was gone. Lost to him before he'd ever even truly found her. And he had no one to blame for it but himself.

True of so many things in his life, that. He had spent most of his life letting down the people who were foolish enough to love him. After all, look how well they had all gotten along without him. Far better than they did with him, no matter what they all said. He had never been more useful than when he had played the willing sacrifice, giving his life for the people he cared about.

Fitting, that. All things considered.

He force himself to move, put one foot in front of another until he too was at the door, out the door and in the corridor beyond. Glancing to his right, in the direction of Molly's office and, most likely, Molly herself.

He sighed, deeply, resigned.

Better this way. Far better. He could never have been what she needed. Not truly. Not _really_.

How he would have liked to at least..._try_. For her...he would have tried.

"Merry Christmas, Molly Hooper," he murmured, knowing she couldn't hear him but feeling better for it all the same. "And goodbye."

He straightened his scarf, turned up his collar, and walked for the exit, his phone in his hand as he typed out a text to his brother. The opening salvo, as it were.

_Will be there for Christmas. Bringing John. Inviting Mary. Tell Mummy. ~SH_


End file.
